Abstract

This article offers a consideration of the ways that the politics of normative childhoods areshaped by discourses of happiness predicated on heteronormativity. Responding to the work of CristynDavies and Kerry Robinson (2013, this issue), the authors argue that non-normative families and inparticular, non-normative parenting, are obliged to secure, protect and police their children’s perceivedentitlements to normative ‘happy’ childhoods in order to achieve social legitimacy. Such obligations,they contend, locate non-normative parents and families, rather than societies, as responsible for theeffects of discriminatory social norms to which they are subjected. Informed by the work of JonathanSilin, the authors support a politics of childhood that gives discursive legitimacy to children’s voice andexperience regarding the ways in which normativity is enforced at their and their families’ expense.